It is known to use a concrete pumping truck and pipe or a boom truck to place concrete at a targeted site. The boom truck incorporates boom and pipe apparatus to pump flowable concrete mixture to a remote location, which can be at a greater distance from the pumping truck or at a different elevation, such as an upper floor or a basement of a building. It is difficult to use conventional boom trucks between floors of buildings because there may not be enough clearance between the floor and the overhead structures to reach the entire floor with the articulated boom. Furthermore, the boom of the concrete pumping truck may also not be sufficiently long to reach most remote portions of the floor on which the concrete is being deposited, which would require the use of additional pipes or hoses to carry and place the concrete at those remote locations.
In areas where boom trucks cannot reach or where a concrete pumping truck is available while a boom truck is not, a movable pipe or multiple sections of pipe or hose may be connected to the concrete pump and extended in order to reach the remote portions of the floor. Although such systems are capable of reaching the remote areas from the concrete pumps, the pipes and hoses filled with concrete mixture are difficult to manipulate in order to properly place the concrete at the remote portions due to the substantial weight of the filled pipes and/or hoses. Mobile devices are known in the art for supporting the concrete filled pipes and hoses to assist in the positioning and movement of the pipes and hoses to allow an efficient placement for the concrete mixture throughout the floor.
One such mobile device for manipulating the concrete filled pipes and hoses can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 6,588,976 issued to Philip Quenzi, et al on Jul. 8, 2003, and in U.S. Pat. No. 6,623,208, issued to Philip Quenzi et al on Sep. 23, 2003. Several different embodiments of the mobile devices are disclosed in the Quenzi patents, including a four-wheeled apparatus on which the concrete pipe is affixed to the top of the chassis supported by the four wheels. The concrete pipe holding device is pivoted to the chassis to permit the movement of the wheeled apparatus across the sub grade surface of the floor on which the concrete mixture is to be deposited. The four-wheeled apparatus is steerable by turning pairs of wheels.
An alternative embodiment of the apparatus incorporates a wheel-trolley track mechanism housing orthogonally oriented wheels to provide the ability to move in alternative directions, powered in one direction and with the extension of the telescopic pipe with the rotation of the orthogonally extending wheels. The Quenzi devices support the concrete pipe over the top of the chassis, which requires that rigid pipe sections be used with the wheeled devices, even though a more flexible hose leads from the concrete pump to the rigid pipe, as is shown in the drawings. Furthermore, some of the embodiments require cooperation with an articulated or a telescopic pipe apparatus to be able to operate effectively.
It would be desirable to provide a mobile apparatus that would have great flexibility in movement over the subgrade floor surface to be able to efficiently place concrete mixture in remote portions of the floor. It would also be desirable to provide a mobile apparatus that can be operable with both flexible concrete pump hose and rigid pipe sections. It would further be desirable to provide a mobile apparatus for moving concrete pump hose and pipe that can be operated by remote control.